Food is the most widespread and most convenient form of entertainment” wisely argues a once-obese friend of mine. Among all the vital functions, nothing can beat eating. It’s social, unlike sleeping; it is frequent and consistent throughout all your life, unlike sex.

One could easily argue the cook, and not another pleasure provider, is indeed the most ancient job on earth. Like every other given fun thing on earth, you don’t want to abuse food, either as nourishment or as a topic of conversations. Eaten food and spoken food are almost as entertaining and feed upon each other.

Unlike most topics, everyone is qualified enough to talk about food. We all have enough repertoire to talk about (pantagruelian family dinners, undiscovered restaurants, exotic holidays) and we can all offer some personal fresh insights (national specialties, secret recipes, smart tricks).

We all become patriotic when the supremacy of our own cuisine is questioned (any country has its own flatbread or its peculiar way to cook chicken) but we all agree on the internationally accepted fact that no cooking style can beat one’s grandmother’s.

Food is the universal icebreaker that bails you out of the awkwardness of communication dead-ends, the common denominator of small talks in any language.

We may manage maintain a perfect shape but we all tend to overdose the food talking. As a result, our conversations (not to mention our social medias and tv programs) are dominated by a self-inflicted foodocracy. While it is easy to get why people shouldn’t supersize themselves, the danger of overdosing food tales is more subtle.

Why should lengthy food-based chats ring alarm bells in your mind?

You and your interlocutor may not have enough mutual knowledge or affinity to start an exchange, and thus rely on the ultimate bail out that can always trigger a conversation between strangers. The catalysis is ephemeral, taking back the parts to the initial awkward impasse.

Otherwise, and worse, you and your interlocutor may not have any other other topic where you can be as interesting for each other as when you are talking about food. The chat may still go on for hours but would gradually lose its flavor.

You don’t want to be stuck in a conversation with people who have only one topic they can fully master and be interesting in. Being food the universal common ground everyone feels confident with, talking about eating has the ability of flattening the level of exchange.

The quality of a group conversation is inversely proportional to the time elapsed before the topic food shows up. Let us let food be the only entertainment we have. After all, a book can be as expensive as a pizza. And as tasty, conversation-wise.

The quakes of the past 3 weeks in my region Emilia-Romagna killed 26 people, evicted thousands, affected us all. Their most destabilizing aftermath is an overwhelming uncertainty that could last for months, if not years.

Few endless seconds of earth shaking are just an infinitesimal part of the phenomenon called earthquake. If you are lucky enough not to get injured in those moments, the hardest part comes when the earth turns still again.

The thought of the earth shaking became an intrusive presence lingering in every instances of my everyday life. I perceive imaginary earthquakes all the time, finding myself staring at the hanging chandelier in my living room to check whether it’s swinging or not. If the pendant is still, I can always look at twitter and get a consistent source of drama checking out the viral hashtag #terremoto. I ended up losing my distress, my sleep and ultimately my way of living.

Although I felt distinctly all the major episodes, I have been in the lucky party of those who haven’t had their lives destroyed by the quakes, as my town Cervia did not suffer from any material damages whatsoever.

Though, I immediately joined the club of those who can’t help being frustrated. Once my psyche has been violated by those quakes, doubts haven’t stopped insinuating my mind. What if the next one tears down my house? What if the earth keeps on shaking for weeks and all the tourists flee our beaches thus screwing our entire economy? Am I too superficial if I just try not to think about it? Am I irresponsible if I try to have fun? Or am I just overreacting? Is there really nothing I can do to help myself anyways?

The fear for the earthquake must have been a sort of atavistic Achilles heel for me, as I have always been very sensitive about the topic since way before 20th May 2012 when the first major quake of my life came knocking at my door.

This time more than ever, running away from my fear is just impossible. The earthquake is all over the place, talked about on news papers, shared on the social media, drawn onto the faces of the people who ran way from their collapsing houses and sought shelter in the close seaside town where I live. My family’s hotel is hosting 27 earthquake refugees, though some of them prefer sleeping inside their parked cars in our open-air parking lots anyways.

“Did you feel the quake last night?” is the latest ice-breaking sentence after which everyone becomes a self-taught geologist pontificating on earth faults, magnitudes, sussultatory vs undulatory quake, anti-seismic architecture and so forth.

I never bought home-made pseudo-scientific palliatives. “We live on the seaside, the sandy ground reduces the effect of a quake”; “The epicenter is in Modena, it’s far from here” (as if 130 km were “far” for plate tectonics!); “The quakes are moving west-ward, we are going to be OK” (on 6th June, nature rebelled against this trivial non sense and gave us a 4.5 magnitude quake with epicenter in the sea right in front of my town).

Another very common refrain has been “Italians show their best side in harsh situations”. Sure, It is a pleasant lullaby to be heard especially because it often epitomizes stories of people who do not give up, families who want to rebuild their houses and workers who strive to start again their routine at the workplace.

Yet, unfortunately it seems to me more like a popular placebo aimed to keep people’s heads and faith high. It’s not as if I’m trying to blame anyone for lying to ourselves or doing cheap-ass propaganda, I am just not one of those who really believes this situation can get the best out of people. I may sound cynical, but it seems to me that what it is usually called “the best” should better be addressed as an instinctive self-defense effort.

Probably, the truth of the matter is that I wish it were true- that Italians are really great in fighting tragedies back- but the thought that I might soon have to prove it myself scares the hell out of me.

No one is able to tell when it will be over, there is nothing left to be done but waiting. For me, this equals feeling unbearably powerless.

As anxiety grows, my level of mental attention is dramatically dropping. Even writing this short post cost me a lot of effort and way too much time. The rational part of me persuaded the absent-minded one it was worth it. For the first time since you blog you’ll write an article for yourself and not for the readers, I heard in my mind.

Writing down my thoughts is the best way I came up with to exorcise my uncertainty. Writing a post takes a more thorough introspection than a simple oral conversation.

So far away from my usual style of writing, I was uneasy, nearly embarrassed, at beginning so many sentences with the word “I”. Initially, I had opted for more impersonal idiomatic expressions but soon I realized I was just telling my story “in disguise” because I was too afraid of letting anyone know how insecure I am.

That would have been an other little win of the earthquake over me. No, not this time.

Winston Churchill once said: “Italians lose wars as if they were football games and lose football games as if they were wars”. Outrageous insult for Italian people’s honor? Of course, but not for the reason it was meant.

Italians are socially allowed to be alienated from any political party, but have to root for a football team. Anti-patriotism is widely accepted and harsh criticism of the nation is often encouraged, but being sympathetic for a foreign national team during a World Cup equals being a castaway of society.

Doesn’t matter what happened in the world, football will always have it’s spot in the sun all on television news, front pages of news papers, social media trends, and ultimately people’s interactions. When Serie A stops for religious holidays or national mourning, it is like a big part of the collective routine is missing.

Calcio is the place where you can shelter from the roughness of everyday’s life, knowing you will never be alone. Karl Marx wrote that Religion is the heart of a heartless world where people seek consolation and distress: Religio opium populi, i.e. religion is the opium of the masses. Calcio is the modern and ultimate opium of Italian people, with the undeniable advantage that unlike God, a ball is something you can see, listen to, touch and possibly kick at your disposal.

Marx argued humans are alienated thus produce religion as a reflection of theirs: In other words, man created God in his own image and not the other way round. Calcio is a microcosm of Italian society, a pseudo-theatrical representation of its virtues and flaws. It just has it all, from gossip through justice to politics.

“Once a rule is born, a new way to cheat is found” goes an Italian popular saying. Italian football players are well-known floppers and whiners, perfect incarnations of citizens who are instinctively seeking to get around the law and mock its enforcers.

Internships and poorly paid temporary contracts are pretty much all the Italian job market has to offer till you are in your late twenties. Italian young football players are rarely given a chance to shine in pro teams and are labeled as “young” –thus inexperienced- till when they are 25-26, ages when foreign colleagues are expected to have reached a mature phase of their careers.Yet, sometimes Italians manage to make it against all the odds thanks to an inner extra-something.

“When the going gets rough, Italians get going” wrote Italian columnist Beppe Severgnini commenting the way Italy strives to avoid a Greece-like state failure. The unsolved Brazilian mystery

“How could Italy possibly get 1982 and 2006 World Cups?”- won by under-talented Italian teams against overqualified international juggernauts- commonly finds the same answer offered by Corriere della Sera’s journalist.

Too bad most Italians would fail to catch Churchill’s subtle irony and downgrade it to mere football taunting (“Oh yeah? So why did the English hire an Italian coach for their national team?” would be my candidate for most common counter-argument).

“The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness” said Marx1. Too bad Italian masses are so addicted to their own opium not to let the beautiful sport of Football prevail over the pagan cult of Calcio.

If used with a grain of salt, Twitter could provide a significant amount of snapshots of the public understanding of an issue. Being the more instinctive among all the blogs, it recently opened a window to both Italians’ broken hearts and their disillusioned minds.

#Vadaabordocazzo has been a viral Trending Topic in Italy immediately after the disclosure of the phone call between the Captain Francesco Schettino and Livorno Port Authority Gregorio De Falco. It literally means, “Go on board, damn it!” and was the desperate and passionate cry by De Falco when he realized that dozens were still in the hands of a run-away coward. Despite the expletive term, the De Falco’s sentence was quoted by all newspapers and played on television without censure.

Driven by the popularity on social media, “Go on board” has been elected as ultimate epitome of the drama and triggered a much broader debate. After few days when the attention of the public was on the mere chronicle of the tragedy itself, the focus shifted to the ominous metaphor of Concordia as the quintessence of Italy itself.

Schettino became an easy target for many. He was inexplicably incautious, passing 500 meters from the coast instead of cruising 2,5 miles away as expected; he proved to be inexcusably incapable, waiting 68 long minutes before declaring the evacuation of the ship and organizing the procedure; and last but not least, he acted like a textbook coward, fleeing Costa Concordia with many passengers still in need of help and guidance. {pullquote}“It’s dark outside” was the pathetic excuse provided by a lost Schettino to justify the fact he couldn’t get back aboard.{/pullquote} De Falco became an instant role model by popular acclamation.

He was competent and focused striving to coordinate the operations from the mainland. He showed guts and charisma, you don’t need to speak Italian to get it.

Now he is vigorously declining his “15 minutes of fame”, claiming he had only done his job. Whereas Schettino seemed to have perfect resume to star in a hypothetical “Italian Next Scapegoat”, De Falco’s magnetic fascination entitled him to become the positive hero needed to give a sweeter spin to this dramatic story. {pullquote}"What do you want to do? Going Home?” replied De Falco.

"Schettino, maybe you saved yourself from the sea, but I'll make you have trouble for sure“{/pullquote} In those comments exceeding 140 characters, while reconstruction of the characters was quite similar, the analysis sought to extend the scope of the dichotomy to a wider range of national issues.

Massimo Gramellini, columnist of major daily La Stampa, wrote in an editorial: “we are a joke again, a cliché for American TV news, an excuse for a fight between French politicians”. On Schettino:

“He is the type of Italian we cannot pretend not to know. Full of himself instead of confident.Unaware of the duties connected to his role. (..)A guy that makes bravados for the sake of bragging and then tries to hide them reasserting the mantra of ‘everything is all right, no problem’.”

Then Gramellini finished by paraphrasing a famous quote on Berlusconi: “I am not afraid of Schettino himself, I’m afraid of Schettino in myself”.

Popular political comedian Maurizio Crozza, whose monologues on Italy’s contradictions are very popular on the web, sharply pointed out:

“Hadn’t we already gotten rid of that guy who said ‘everything is all right’ while the whole thing is f****g sinking?” The similarities are self-evident and the rhetoric has flown naturally out of many Italians: a sinking ship representing a failing state, a bad captain incarnating a generation of incompetent leaders, a resolute officer embodying a team of technocrats called to save the country from the precipice.

Though, what hurts the most, and what is probably the inner reason behind all the metaphoric thinking and the following shenanigans, is the ominous question everybody is being unconsciously haunted by: what if Italy sank even though a new good captain who was put at the helm? “Unhappy is the land that is in need of a hero”, wrote Bertolt Brecht in “Life of Galileo”.

The sinking of Concordia reminds everyone that even heroes may not be able to make up for villains’ wrongdoing. Italy is not necessarily seeking for a pet-hero, as Italians are too narcissistic to rally around a single paladin.

Yet, Italy grows as unhappy by seeing its virtuous people prevented from prevailing on incompetent individuals. Or, to put it in fashionable terms, by witnessing its De Falcos getting sunk by its Schettinos.

Enrico Cellini graduated in international relations from the University of Bologna.

He has been an exchange student at Denver University, studied the use of "soft power" as foreign policy tool, written thesis on American public diplomacy and has recently published articles on China's economic development model. Enrico Cellini is particularly attentive to American and Italian politics and an almost fanatical baseball fan.